The top 10 dental discoveries of 2017

Dental research came a long way this year, and some studies stood out above the rest.

Scientists at King’s College London have discovered a method for healing tooth pulp naturally. Normally, a tooth produces a thin band of dentine to cover the pulp when a tooth is damaged in some way. But this dentine is not always enough to really protect the pulp. For larger holes, such as caries, the dentine is not enough to fully heal the wound.

To make up for this, dentists use synthetic cements and fillings to treat these larger holes. However, while these do fill the hole, they fail to restore the normal mineral level of the tooth because they do not disintegrate.

To overcome this, researchers at King’s College London began studying the effects of stem cells, specifically how to renew in order to facilitate dentine production,